


the world with harmony to join

by slugmutt



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, F/M, Kylo is Ares, Rey is Aphrodite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2019-11-18 11:50:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18120236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slugmutt/pseuds/slugmutt
Summary: Being the goddess of love is hard enough without having to deal with stupid, hulking war gods and their hungry eyes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In case anyone's read my other Greek Mythology AU, this one has a different set of characters. Here Kylo is Ares, Hux is Hephaestus, Rey is Aphrodite. Other characters to be announced as they appear.

They call her the goddess of love. And if that isn’t the biggest cosmic joke in history, Rey doesn’t know what is. Her the goddess of love. Her, who has never been loved by anybody.

To be fair, it’s not like the rest of the Olympians have what anyone would call a functional family. But still, they have each other. They have a mother who cared enough to save them.

Rey’s father was a dismembered corpse which, thrown in the sea, created her entirely unintentionally. She supposes that makes her mother the tide. Although no matter how many days she ever spent walking the shores, the waves never spoke to her.

The other gods have husbands, wives, lovers. Rey has a husband too. A husband who _hates_ her.

 

She was so happy on the day they married. So happy and so hopeful.

She tries not to remember that, now. Remembering feels like a kick to the stomach.

The other gods had laughed, or worse, pitied her. Such a shame, they murmured, for such a beautiful young thing to marry one such as Hux. Or as he’s better known, Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths, the twisted, broken son among the crowd of beautiful immortals.

She had held her head high and ignored them. True, her husband was not beautiful of form, but his mind was dazzling in its brilliance, and he was not unkind. True, her husband had scars that went far deeper than the physical. But deep down, he just needed love. Rey was sure of it.

And she was right. The problem was, it wasn’t her love he needed.

She’d tried so damn hard. She’d smiled at him, sang for him, cooked for him, loved him. She’d offered herself body and soul. And he’d turned from her smiles, he’d drowned out her song with the whirring of machines, he’d left her to eat alone while he slept in his workshop. Outside, men and women laid offerings at her altars and wrote odes to her beauty. Inside, she sat cold and silent next to a husband who wanted nothing from her; not her body, not her soul, not her love.

“You look too much like _her_ ,” he’d said one night when he was drunk. That was when her last piece of hope died.

The thing is, Rey doesn’t actually look like anyone. Or more, she looks a little like everyone. Some see her pale and golden-haired, others see her with skin dark and luminous as onyx. Some see her slender and supple as a reed, some see her fat and curvy and luscious. Because nobody sees Rey, not really. They see beauty, whatever that means to them.

Apparently to Hephaestus, beauty means the only goddess he never calls by name. Beauty means Hera, the mother who hates him. It’s tragic even by Olympian standards, and there’s not a single damn thing Rey can do to fix it.

 

It is then that she discovers the humans.

She’s always known they exist, of course. Everyone knows. There’s even a window from Olympus to the mortal world; a break in the clouds through which they can watch the humans as they are born, struggle, and die. Sometimes the gods even take sides in the mortals’ battles, or mark one of them a hero.

But before, they were on the edge of her consciousness, pretty little pets to fuss over when she was in the mood and walk away from when she wasn’t. After Hephaestus’s rejection, they become the center of her world. She pours her energy into them, pulling gently at the strings of their lives in order to bring them together, in order to bring some love and laughter into a world that seems so full of pain.

Sometimes their stories end well. When that happens, it makes her lonely, endless life feel almost worthwhile.

Sometimes they end very badly. No matter how many times she sees it, it hurts every time.

And then one day, something changes.

She’s watching a pair of lovers. The woman is fierce, hardened by years of suffering, but she has a tender heart. The man is brave, and loyal, and kind. And now he lies dying in his lover’s arms, another victim of the war that has taken so much from them both already. The woman’s pain is terrible to behold. It cuts Rey like knives, until she’s doubled over struggling to breathe.

She’s seen this before; she’s felt this before. But this time, something new happens. This time, she gets angry.

Looking back later, she realizes that there were other, smarter ways of reacting. Ways that didn’t involve rushing to confront the most terrifying god on Olympus with no weapons and no backup.

She finds him in the gardens. A tall figure all in black, his back to her. She’s never properly seen him before; she’s always been smart enough to keep her distance. But today anger has overwhelmed her common sense.

She shouts his name before she can think better of it.

He turns, his face hidden under that stupid helmet he always wears. “Lady Aphrodite,” he says, a tone of amusement in his voice. “Kythereia.”

His response has her seeing red. He’s laughing at her already, just like the rest. Amused that the little goddess of love, beauty and other worthless things is worried, because what could she possibly have to worry about?

“It’s Rey,” she snaps. “And you have a lot to answer for, Lord Ares.”

“Please, call me Kylo,” he answers. He still sounds amused, damn him.

“You share your name, but hide your face?”

To her surprise, he removes his helmet with a practiced ease, and she finds truly seeing the war god for the first time. She wasn’t prepared for his face. By rights, he should have looked cruel. He should have had harsh, angular features, thin lips, and short cropped hair. His eyes should have been angry, or maybe cold.

Instead, his full lips and curling hair make his face sensitive and oddly sensual. The face of a poet, she thinks, not a warrior. And his eyes, oh… she could lose herself in those eyes.

Rey frowns, and forces herself to take a step back. _He’s evil_ , she reminds herself. She knew that good people could be ugly. It should hardly come as a surprise that sometimes cruelty could be beautiful.  

Still, it takes her a moment to gather together her thoughts and speak. “You killed them,” she says.

“Killed who?” His voice is bored, but those eyes watch her with something that might almost be anticipation.

“The humans,” she says, her voice shaking. “Your little war is killing thousands, tens of thousands. _Stop it._ ”

“The humans are killing each other,” he says, his eyes not wavering from hers.

For a minute, she can barely breathe for fury. “You dare,” she snarls, stepping closer, “You dare to stand here and act as thought this weren’t your doing?”

He looks at her, and something in his gaze makes her suddenly aware of how close her feet have taken her. She can feel the heat of his body, can smell him. He smells of spices and hot breezes, nothing like she was expecting.

She holds her head high and stares him down, refusing to be embarrassed.

A smile plays at the corner of his mouth. A tiny thing, but it is there. “Do you not fear me?” She shakes her head. “You should.” It is an observation, not a threat; he watches her curiously as he says it.

She realizes, with a flash of shame, that she amuses him. Of course she does. He’s the god of war, empires rise and fall with his moods; millions die at his word. And her, well – she’s nothing. The goddess of beauty with no face to call her own, the never-loved goddess of love. What sway could she possibly have over him?

She can’t help stomping her foot in frustration, which just makes his smile grow.

“Perhaps it is you who should fear me,” she says coldly, trying desperately to grab back some semblance of control. She expects him to continue in his mockery, but instead he surprises her by growing serious. His eyes take her in as if he’s reading her very soul, and it takes every ounce of her willpower not to look away.

“Perhaps it is,” he says, after a minute that feels like an eternity. And then he lifts his helmet back on, and Rey is so relieved that she doesn’t have to look at those curls and those damn eyes of his that by the time she realizes that she never even told him her demands, he’s already walked away.

 

She should back off, and consider her point made. Kylo didn’t kill her, or even threaten her. That’s about the best outcome she could have hoped for.

Instead, she finds herself searching him out.

“Hey! Kylo!”

She forces herself to keep moving toward him, even as her feet ache to run away. It’s not just the dark armor, or the helmet. There’s something about Kylo himself that screams danger, a dark aura that plays around him even when, like now, he’s doing nothing more than standing next to a fountain.

“We never finished our conversation the other day,” she says, forcing her voice into calm.

Instead of answering, he hurls a bolt of pure energy in her direction. It’s all she can do to shoot out a hand and deflect it into a nearby tree, which bursts immediately into flames.

“What the hell,” she yells. Realizing, as she does, that it might be the last thing she ever says. If the god of war himself has chosen to fight her, she doesn’t have a prayer. But seriously – what the hell?

He removes his helmet, unasked. “You’re very powerful. I thought you might be,” he says, as if they were talking about the weather. His tone is belied by the excitement in his eyes.

“And if I hadn’t been?”

He shrugs. “Then I assume you’d be in quite a bit of pain right now.” He stalks forward and examines her, until she feels, yet again, as if it’s he who sought her out, and she who must meet his approval.

“I didn’t come here to talk about my power.”

He makes a vague noise of disapproval. “You should have. You need a teacher.”

Of all the… “I do not need a teacher,” she says, turning her nose up at him. Of course, since he’s a full head taller, the gesture is somewhat wasted. “I certainly don’t need you to teach me.”

“So do what I just did.”

Rey finds herself trapped. The last thing she wants to do is obey Kylo’s orders. If she does that, he wins. But then, if she doesn’t do it, he’ll think it’s because she can’t. And he’ll win that way, too.

She hesitates too long. She can practically _feel_ his smirk. “That’s what I thought,” he says.

Scowling, she sends a burst of power toward a nearby rock, which bounces for a second as if trying to dance before splitting neatly into two. “See? No teaching necessary.”

“You’re a greater goddess, Rey,” he says with more than a hint of frustration in his voice. She should be irritated that he’s speaking to her like that. Instead, she has to fight back a warm stirring in her chest at the way he says her name. “You can do better than that.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but watches carefully as he demonstrates again, his wrist flicking just so as he hurls a bolt of energy at a statue several meters away. The statue, one of Apollo’s favorite tributes to himself, bursts into a thousand pieces.

Rey’s eyes narrow. She doesn’t always like Apollo – his ego is out of control even by divine standards – but really, must Kylo go around destroying everything as the mood hits him? Who made him king of Olympus? Before she can think, she’s extending a hand and pulling, drawing out an energy from deep within herself and sending it at the shattered statue. She watches in amazement as the marble reassembles, the pieces knitting themselves together until the statue stands on its pedestal as good as new.

“Not exactly what we were going for, but pretty good, yes?” she asks Kylo, a smug note in her voice that she can’t be bothered to hide. He stared silently at the statue for a long moment.

“That’s much harder than breaking things,” he finally says. “You have such power, Rey.” His voice is a caress, an invitation.

It is that, of all things, that finally brings her to her senses. This is Kylo. She shouldn’t be talking to Kylo, she shouldn’t be letting Kylo teach her, and she certainly shouldn’t be wondering what Kylo would do if she reached out and touched him.

“I have to go.” She leaves without waiting for a response, and like before, he lets her.

At night, the conversation plays in her head over and over, no matter how many times she tries to push it away.

 

She knows better than to talk to Kylo. She does.

So why the hell does she keep doing it?

“Good. But you’re favoring your right side,” he says, and instead of walking away like she should, she flexes her fingers and takes a step closer, preparing to try again. Kylo’s eyes are on her, like they always are, and full of the usual mix of wariness, excitement, and… well, she might be fooling herself, but it looks almost like admiration.

(She knows why she keeps coming back. It’s because nobody has ever looked at her that way before, like she’s precious, like she’s powerful.)

She tries again, smiling as she manages to hit him with a handful of sparks while dodging the tendrils of power he sends her way.

“Better,” he says. It’s high praise, coming from him. “But you’re still – “ He trails off, coming closer, until he towers over her and she can feel the heat of his body. Rey swallows, and forces herself not to tremble as he comes around behind her, one of his massive arms wrapping around hers, his hand around her wrist. “Like this,” he says, surprisingly gentle as he flicks her hand through the air.

(She is used to her reaction to him, at this point, to the way her skin seems to come to life under his. It means nothing, she knows. It’s her loneliness that makes her see her own dark desire reflected in his gaze, that whispers to her that sometimes, he seems just as affected by their touch as she is.)

This time, the sparks fly straight. She hates to admit it, but Kylo knows what he’s talking about. When it comes to blowing things up, anyway.

He lets out a cry of triumph, then turns back. His eyes meet hers, and suddenly he’s dropping her hand and stepping quickly away. Her body cries out in protest at the sudden chill of the air.

“Soon you’ll be as strong as any of the Olympians,” he says, not quite meeting her eyes.

Anger flares in her, sudden and hot. He just had to do that, didn’t he? To remind her, again, that that’s all she is to him – the weakest goddess, a project to be taken on out of pity, or maybe out of a twisted sense of pride. And of course, that she’s not a _real_ Olympian.

“It’s not like any of this matters,” she says, her voice cold. “It’s not like anyone is going to attack me here on Olympus.”

Kylo frowns as if she’s insulted him personally. Maybe she has. She might have accepted that her title is mostly a joke, but he takes his role as the god of war seriously. Frighteningly so, at times. She wouldn’t have thought someone could condemn themselves for not being violent enough, not being brutal enough, but then she met Kylo.

“Attack can come from anywhere,” he rebukes her. “But this is about more than that. It’s about your potential. You could be something special, if you tried.”

If he’d blasted her with one of those destructive bolts of his, it would have hurt less. Could be. _Could_ be special. If only she were different.

She was dreaming, to think he might have… But no.

“You’re one to talk,” she says, before she can think better of it. He flinches, so quickly she almost misses it, and she feels a brief, awful moment of satisfaction.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, his voice dropping to a growl.

“You’re a god,” she says, her voice trembling despite herself. “Damn it, Kylo, you keep talking about my potential, but what about yours, what about your power to do good? What good is a god who does nothing but hurt people?”

He comes closer, and for the first time, he looks truly angry with her. Before she can think of a way to fix this, he has her by the arm, and is dragging her toward the portal to the mortal world. She beats at him ineffectually. He ignores that, along with her demands that he release her.

He drags her closer, and suddenly she realizes what he has planned.

“No,” she whispers, but he is merciless, of course he is. He pulls her closer, closer, forces her face over the edge.

“Look,” he commands. And she does.

It’s carnage below. Blood, and fire, and pain, pain everywhere.

“You see that?” he asks, his tone conversational. “What do you think that is, Rey?”

“One of your wars, I assume,” she spits out.

He shakes his head. “This isn’t my doing. This is what their leader does to them.” His tone takes on a wild excitement, then. “But I’m going to fix it. I’m going to help them rise up.”

“Thousands more will die,” she objects. “Hundreds of thousands.”

“Yes,” he says, the note of excitement still there.

“You’re a monster,” she says. He stiffens next to her, but doesn’t deny it.

“You would condemn them to a life of suffering,” he says. “I would set them free.”

His voice is so smooth, so beautiful, even as he says such horrible things.

“You call this freedom? Freedom to hate, freedom to suffer?”

“This is how the future is created, Rey,” he says. “First, the past has to die.”

She doesn’t bother with words. Instead, she forces herself to relax, to lean casually over the abyss as if this were her idea of a good time.

He responds almost immediately, his hand loosening, his body leaning closer. He needs this, she realizes suddenly. He needs her to relax, to accept what he is saying. To understand. He is desperate for someone to look at his work and see something other than chaos and despair; to see something worthwhile.

Well. That’s not going to be her.

The moment that his hand falls from her arm she twists away, and runs.

He could catch her, if he wanted to, she’s sure of it. But he just watches as she flees, his features distorted by his rage.

 

That, too, should be the end. It is final now, irrevocable. The God of War is cruel, and evil, and Rey wants nothing to do with him.

And he’s clearly furious with her.

So all in all, it’s really not clear why they keep running into each other. Let alone running into each other like this.

“What are you doing here?”

Her voice contains all of the fury that she’d wished for the last time they spoke. She has, after all, had weeks to stew over it.

“This is a temple of the gods,” he says, pulling himself up to his full height. She hates it when he does that. “And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a god.”

“Yes, I know it’s a temple, it’s _my temple_ ,” she says. Paleokastro is her place, everyone knows that. Nobody comes here but her. She comes here when she needs to be alone – away from the drama of Olympus, from her hateful husband, and from massive hulking war gods with dark, hungry eyes.

And here he is, intruding on her place as if he has every right to be here. Never in her thousands of years of life has she wanted to commit murder, but oh, is she ever close.

He strides toward her, leaving the shadows, and – is he shirtless? Really??

The small dip of his shoulder is probably as close as he ever gets to a shrug. “Sacred ground is sacred ground,” he replies. “I needed a place to do a ceremony.”

“And you just happened to choose my temple,” she says, crossing her arms.

“No,” he admits, taking another step closer.

“No,” she repeats after him. It comes out a question.

“I chose your temple for a reason,” he says, taking another step closer. The wind off the sea swirls through the holy place, raising goosebumps across her skin.

“And what reason was that?” She makes one last attempt at dignity, drawing herself up and fixing him with her sternest look. But even as she does so, her nerves are shouting a warning. Kylo never admits defeat. Ever. Let alone this easily.

This confession… This isn’t going to go the way she’d hoped, is it?

He takes one more step. Any closer, and he’ll be on top of her. As it is he looms over her, forcing her to tilt her head back to meet his gaze, because she certainly isn’t going to look at his shirtless chest.

“I miss you,” he says, his voice honey and fire. She blinks. That is not what she had been expecting.

“You miss me.” She must have misheard.

“I don’t understand it either,” he says, and under other circumstances she might have laughed at the note of child-like frustration in his voice, but right now laughter is the last thing on her mind.

“But I feel it,” he adds, raising a hand to her face. His palm covers her cheek, his fingers brush through her hair.

She opens her mouth to curse him, to tell him to leave this place. She _does_. But what comes out is,

“I feel it, too.”

His mouth covers hers.

If she had thought of how the war god would kiss – which she hasn’t, thank you very much – she would have expected something fast and brutal.

But his lips are gentle, almost unbearably so. He kisses her as if her lips are petals, he holds her hips as softly as if she were made of glass.

She feels herself pulled in two directions; two forces competing for her heart. One is soaring, turning circles in the sky, singing with joy, because this, _this_ is what she has been wanting. All her life she’s been waiting, hoping against hope, and now finally someone is touching her with all of the tenderness and all of the need she could hope for…

… and it’s him. It’s _him_ , and another part of her is spiraling downwards, because this is all wrong. It should be her husband holding her like this. It should at least be someone kind and gentle. If she must stray, let it be with a young mortal with laughter in his eyes and poetry on his lips, a pretty, copper-skinned man who sings of love.

Kylo is not poetry and laughter. Kylo is blood and steel, anguish and fury. But his lips are soft against hers, and his touch feels like starlight against her skin, and maybe this is wrong, but she can’t bring herself to stop.

When her tongue nudges his lips, he jerks away.

Rey blinks up at him, surprise turning quickly to embarrassment. His eyes are full of suspicion now.

“Is this a joke?” he asks, and her heart breaks a little despite herself. Is he so sure, then, that nobody could want him?

Still, for a moment, she’s tempted to say yes. That would end this, before things get worse.

But she is the goddess of love, and love is kind. “No,” she says, simply.

Now it is his turn to be stunned into silence. “Rey,” he whispers, and her name is a broken prayer on his lips.

He kisses her again, and this time, it is with all the fierceness of a summer storm. Rey finds that she likes it this way, too. He steals her breath and she gives it to him gladly, wanting only to be closer. She loses all sense of time as they stand there, their lips meeting again and again, his palms rough through the thin fabric of her dress.

At some point, though, she becomes aware of wanting more. As if reading her mind, he picks her up, thumbs caressing the inside of her thighs as he carries her over and sets her down on the crude stone altar. Now her face is level with his. He stands between her thighs, and suddenly she is very, very aware of what they could be doing, if it weren’t for a thin layer of cloth between them.

She wraps her legs around Kylo, pulling him closer, and smiles at the sound he makes against her lips. “Rey,” he whispers again, sounding like a man in pain.

Well. Fair is fair. He may be suffering, but she is consumed. It’s fitting, really, that he’s put her onto her own altar, because she could almost be an offering, burning into dust. His hands and his lips and his soft moans when she touches him are turning her to ashes, stripping her bare, until she is nothing but starlight and wild hunger.

He looks so surprised when she pulls his belt off that she almost laughs. But then his hands slide further up her thighs, and her amusement is swallowed by a wave of sensation so strong it almost frightens her.

He begins pushing her down, gently but firmly. She shivers at the cold of the stone through her shirt, but then he’s there, his body warming hers as their frantic hands make quick work of their clothing. He moans against her skin, and she hears something rip as he pulls the last scraps of fabric from her.

This isn’t right, a small part of her whispers. Kylo is going to cover her with his body, to pound into her until they both find release, and while it sounds amazing – divine, even – she can’t help feeling that things should be different.

In this, as in all things, she’s not going to let him get the upper hand so easily.

A second before his body settles over hers, she surges up and twists. Maybe she surprises him, or maybe he just doesn’t care, but either way, she ends up exactly where she wanted to be – with her knees on either side of his hips as he leans against the altar. She expects one of his trademark smirks, but instead she gets a genuine smile, small and almost hesitant, and the look in his eyes is something like awe.

Their eyes are almost at and equal height, now, and she keeps her gaze firmly on his as she sinks down, taking him into her.

They fit together perfectly. A different time, she might have cursed at the injustice of it all, but for now she’s nowhere near complaining. Kylo is taking advantage of the new position to run his hands over her body, to watch her in the moonlight, and she’s past thinking of anything but how perfect it all feels.  

When she shatters around him, she cries out his name, and she feels him tense under her. “Rey,” he says, chokes, and then he’s kissing her again, and following her over the edge.

He keeps holding her close to his chest, after. She considers putting up a fuss about it, but then he might listen to her for once and actually let her go, and she can’t risk that. So instead she lies there, and finds herself thinking about her position. Metaphorically (although she can already think of some literal positions she’d like to try out, another time).

She is the goddess of love, and she’s just given herself to someone who isn’t her husband. _It’s not like I’m the goddess of marriage, that’s Hera_ , she thinks, and bites back a half-hysterical giggle.

She is the goddess of love, and finally, finally, she knows what it is to be touched by someone whose power matches her own, someone who truly sees her.

She is the goddess of love, and for the first time in her very long life, she’s starting to see the power in that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (the best part about a Greek Gods AU is that even if episode IX somehow turns them into family members, this fic won’t be any more creepy than Greek mythology already is)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more characters join the mix. Leia = Hera, Poe = Poseidon, Rose = Demeter, Holdo = Hestia, DJ = Hermes.

He hates her at least a little. She can tell from the way he sometimes looks at her, his lips flattening as he watches her and contemplates something he never chooses to share. She can tell by the way he says goodbye, or rather, doesn’t. Every time they come together, he walks away in the end as if he has nothing to say to her, as if he’s finally gotten her out of his system. Only to come back the next week with angry eyes and desperate lips.

She can’t judge him for it, she’s the same way. Telling herself every morning that it has to stop, wishing for him beside her every night. Carefully filling her mind with angry thoughts, with reminders of why this is a terrible idea, only to have it all blow away like ashes on the wind the minute she sees his face.

He hates her a little, but he never hurts her, unless it’s the kind of sweet pain that brings with it a wave of pleasure. She didn’t know she liked that, but oh, she does. She likes it when he pulls her hair, when his fingers dig into her skin, when his hips snap against hers. She likes the way that no matter how he seems to dominate her, he’s the one whose skin trembles under her touch; who, after, can’t seem to say anything but her name.

He hates her a little, but he wants her a little more. And Rey, sad, lonely creature that she is, soaks in his desire and thirsts for more.

 

She loves his hands. She loves the way they wrap around her waist, the way they splay across her back, the way his fingers feel inside her.

But mostly, she loves the way they trace idly across her skin even now, when they are both spent. Even he can’t possibly want to start again, not so soon, but his fingers keep moving, curling through her hair, tracing a path gently down her shoulder, making her skin spark as if new constellations are coming to life across her body.

Making her feel loved.

They always talk to each other, before. After all, they need an excuse, even if it’s only one they tell themselves. She looks for him so that she can yell at him again for the violence he wreaks on earth. He finds her with new advice about her powers, new exercises he wants her to do. It never lasts more than a few minutes before his lips are on hers, hungry, before she’s pulling him closer and closer still, as if she’s trying to merge them into a single flesh.

They don’t talk after. They used to. She used to say that they could never do this again, she’s married, after all, and he used to agree and say it didn’t make sense, anyway. They used to agree that each time would be the last. But they stopped saying that weeks ago.

Still, when he turns to her, that’s what she expects to hear. But instead he says, “Have you ever seen the southern lights?”

“Do you mean the northern lights?” she asks, automatic. He shakes his head.

She wonders if there’s a purpose to this, or if he’s actually trying to make conversation. The thought that he might be trying to keep her talking, to drag out their time together, is a little frightening and a little wonderful.

“I’ve never seen either,” she admits. “The northern or the southern.”

He flips onto his side with an ease that still impresses her. She’s known him for a while, now, but there’s still something about seeing a man so large move so quickly, so gracefully. “Rey. That’s practically a crime,” he says, only half teasing. “I’m taking you, then. Tomorrow night.”

It takes her several seconds to realize that Kylo, the god of chaos and bloodshed, just asked her out on a date. Except without the “asking” part, because he is still Kylo, after all. For a moment, she’s filled with an emotion so strong it chokes off any possibility of words, or even breath.

She bites back a grin, and agrees to meet him after the stars come out.

 

After that, it just – becomes a thing that they do. It’s amazing how natural it feels, going hand in hand with the war god to see the lights playing over the poles, the strange flowers that grow on the bottom of the ocean, the fire and fury of volcanoes, the hidden places under the earth.

He prefers nature, she finds, loves to show her the stark beauty of the world’s most remote corners. She, in turn, drags him with her into the heart of humanity. They count down the New Year in Times Square, and then the lunar New Year in Beijing. He turns his nose up when he sees the brightly-colored crowds celebrating Holi, but she soon has him decorated in purple, green, and blue, and better yet, smiling and giving as good as he gets.

Sometimes she looks at him and wonders what the hell she thinks she’s doing. Hux may hate her, but he would hate this, too. And Hux can be a spiteful bastard. She shudders to think of what he will do, when he finds out.

Although if she’s honest, it’s not the god she’s technically married to who truly worries her. It’s Kylo; dark, intense Kylo with his violence and his pain. Oh, he would never hurt her physically – and with the training he’s giving her, soon he wouldn't be able to even if he were to try – but how could she give her heart to someone so volatile? To someone who is the opposite of everything she stands for?

Sleeping with him was bad enough. What they’re doing now… Whatever this is, it can only end badly.

(She’s not entirely sure she cares anymore)

 

“Kylo?” she says, her voice echoing in the halls of his palace. She shivers at the sound. Kylo’s palace is a dark place, all sleek black marble and dim torches and long, empty hallways. She’d felt brave as she walked in, but now she mostly just wants to go home.

This is ridiculous. Yes, he was supposed to meet her an hour ago, and yes, he’s never been late before. But he is the god of war. She doesn’t need to worry that something bad has happened to him. Even if someone were to attack him, she’s pretty sure he’d be fine. Still, she has a strange sense of apprehension that she can’t shake, and she needs to see him with her own two eyes. Even if it’s just to hear him mock her for thinking anything could have hurt him.

She finds him downstairs, in a round room with high windows, sitting in a chair so large that he must have had it specially made. Sitting, and staring into the distance as if he hadn’t heard her. It’s only when she walks right up to him and stands between his knees that he looks at her.

“Hi,” she tries, smiling. He just shakes his head, one hand coming to her waist.

“Kylo?”

He closes his eyes as if in pain, while his hand tightens at her hip. She wonders if he’s even aware of the little ways his body betrays him.

“You should go,” he says.

She ignores his words, listening instead to the way his fingers play across her skin, to the way the crease in his brow eases when she lowers herself onto his lap.

“Rey,” he says, sounding as helpless as she feels.

She doesn’t ask what’s wrong. If he wants to talk, he’ll talk. Instead, she busies herself with studying the strong lines of his arms, tracing them with her fingers as he slowly relaxes against her.

“It was nothing,” he finally says, voice gruff. “Just – Zeus being Zeus. Reminding me that I’m – how did he put it? Ah, yes, ‘most hateful of all the gods.’”

He is perfectly still as he speaks, so careful to avoid giving any clue to his feelings. She feels a sudden surge of affection tinged with pain. Silly man. Going perfectly still is, of course, a glaringly obvious clue that something is badly wrong; Kylo is filled with a dark energy that usually keeps him in constant motion.

She turns, knees on either side of his hips. He makes no move to pull her closer; another dead giveaway. She runs her hands up his arms and across his shoulders, smooths the tension in his face with her fingers. She wants to say something, to tell him that Zeus got it all wrong, that he isn’t the bloodthirsty monster they say he is. The problem is that it wouldn’t exactly be true. She doesn't agree with what Kylo does, and they both know it.

“You’re not hateful,” she murmurs. “Not to me.” The look he gives her is skeptical, but she can see the yearning underneath. He’s so much softer than he looks, she thinks; a monster, yes, but one who wants so desperately to be loved.

She leans down and plants a kiss on his collarbone, and feels his hands wrap around her thighs in response. “You’re brave,” she whispers against his neck. “And you’re strong.” She trails her lips upwards, until they brush the shell of his ear. “And you fight for what you think is right.” That much, at least, she can give him. He fights for plenty of other reasons, too, but now doesn’t feel like the time to mention that.

She moves to brush her lips across his cheek, but he stops her, pushes her gently back until their faces are several inches apart. His eyes have lost that horrible blank look, but he still doesn’t look anything close to happy. “Why are you with me, Rey?” She bites her lip, and he adds, “I know it’s not because I’m brave.”

She flips through a dozen possible answers in her mind before settling, ultimately, on the only answer she could ever have given him. The brutally honest one.

“I don’t know.” His face starts to close off, and she rushes to continue, to make him understand. Well, as much as she can hope to make him understand something she doesn’t understand herself. “I like being with you. I like the way you say my name.” She moves her hips ever so slightly, and sees his eyes go darker. “I like the way you touch me. I like the way you make me feel.”

He pulls her down and kisses her, moving so quickly that she barely has time to prepare. For a moment, she loses herself in the kiss. But she manages to pull away, flushed and half breathless, because it turns out she has more to say. “I like your face,” she confesses. “Even just seeing you across the room makes me happy. I like – “

But whatever else she was going to say will have to wait, because Kylo is done with words. His kiss starts hot and urgent, as always, but then it mellows into something different, something that sets her heart racing in a strange mix of delight and terror. Because Kylo is kissing her as if they have all the time in the world, as if she’s everything he ever wanted.

And she lets him. Her heart is still beating double-time, and a part of her wants to tear his clothes off, to mold herself to him, to scratch his back until he bleeds, until they are back on familiar ground. But she lets him kiss her gently, and lets herself kiss him back, feather-light, across his face, his neck, his battle-scarred hands.

He’s silent as he removes her dress, as she unwraps his tunic, as she sinks onto him, their bodies merging. And then, suddenly, he starts talking and doesn’t stop. “I need you,” he tells her, his voice low, and “I like your face, too,” and “don’t leave me,” and “I think about you all the time, Rey, I can’t stop, I don’t think I want to.”

His cock is hitting all of the right places inside her, and his fingers are lovely and clever as always, but it’s his words that send her over the edge. It’s the affection and the desire and the sheer raw _need_ that have her climaxing harder than she ever has before.

Kylo looks absurdly pleased with himself when they are done. She supposes he deserves it.

“I won’t,” she says, as she lifts the pile of pale green silk from the floor and begins to dress herself.

“Won’t what?” he asks. Not lifting a finger to dress himself, just watching her with a lazy satisfaction.

“Won’t leave you,” she says, serious, and his smile just might be the most beautiful thing she’s seen.

 

Their happiness ends quickly. Looking back later, it will feel inevitable. _Of course_ , Rey will think, _something so perfect could not be allowed to last_.

The end begins with Kylo coming to visit her home. Just the sight of him in her doorway sends her into a maelstrom of emotion – _he’s here_ warring with _he needs to leave._ And of course, he walks right in without waiting for a request, and without caring that she’s caught somewhere between delight and pure animal terror.

She intends to greet him politely, and then find an excuse to send him away. (She can’t tell him she’s afraid Hux will see him; she knows him well enough by now to know that will only make him more determined to stay.) Instead, she finds herself five minutes later with her lips desperate against his, her legs wrapped around him, his hard length pressing against her until she keens for more.

And she knows it's madness, she knows it's wrong, but she brings him to her bed. To the bed she’s supposed to share with her husband. The bed where she waited so many long, lonely nights for Hux to show even a crumb of interest. The bed where she used to cry, knowing that there was nobody in the universe who loved her, not even the man she’d married.

That is the bed where Kylo lays her down, where he drives into her, where he makes her scream with pleasure. And as he kisses his way down her neck, his mouth wet and greedy, she can almost feel the memory of loneliness melting away.

It is so good, so stupidly, beautifully good, that she makes the mistake that is her downfall: she allows him to come back the next day.

It is then that they are caught. It is then that Hux traps them, and invites all of Olympus to come bear witness to their shame.

She should have known that this is what he would do. It’s so perfectly Hux – the clever machine, built with meticulous care to trap them in their moment of pleasure; the vengeance; the need to humiliate. Someday, she will wonder how it was that he learned of her betrayal, how he figured them out. 

For today, all she can do is to try to survive, try to keep breathing, as she is swallowed by a wave of scorn. They are all there, every last one of them, to see her and Kylo entangled, naked, to see what they have done. Finn, Poe, Rose, and Holdo. Hux, of course. And Leia; Leia who stares grim-faced at the sight of her son’s wife in the arms of her other son.

Kylo is stone against her. He doesn’t fight. He doesn’t curse Hux, not even once. He barely breathes. She wishes desperately that she could have a minute with him, just one minute to talk to him, to stroke his face, to figure out what is going on inside that mind of his. But she can’t say a thing, not here, not like this.

It is DJ, of all of them, who breaks the mood, turning to Apollo and muttering a question that ends with “… worth it?” and then, with the two of them bursting into laughter. She sees Hux’s face darken, and he turns to snarl at them, but it is too late. In a heartbeat, the crowd turns against him, having decided that the sight of Rey and her deadly lover is more amusing than horrifying.

And still, she focuses on breathing, on surviving. She just has to get through one more minute. One, and then another. She does not let herself wonder how long it will last.

She is only dimly aware of Poe speaking quietly to Hux, but she notices immediately when the net begins to loosen. It tumbles to the floor in a shower of gold, and suddenly they are free. Poe is at her side, gently covering her with a blanket. Rose and Finn give her quick, sympathetic looks before turning to go. She can’t understand the look Leia gives her. She can’t tell if the goddess is furious with her, or planning something, or maybe even sympathetic. Whatever she feels, Leia keeps it to herself, as always.

Hux, on the other hand, she can read like an open book. Her husband is furious, embarrassed, and spiteful. For a moment, she wonders what form his anger will take next. In the next moment, she surprises herself by realizing that she doesn’t care.

Kylo is gone. He glances back only once before leaving her with the sea god, and without a clue what he’s thinking.

The rest doesn’t matter.

 

She intends to wait patiently, to let him come to her. He always does, eventually.

Instead, she finds herself seeking him out the next night, driven by a despair and a fury she can barely understand. She still burns with humiliation at the memory of the day before, her despair over Hux has turned to a dark hatred, his mother saw her naked, and Poe has been sending looks in her direction that can only be described as love-sick. She needs Kylo to distract her, she needs him to explain himself, she needs… She needs him; just him.

He’s so easy to find that it almost makes her smile. Thrace, really? Because where better to hide than the land everyone knows is your birthplace? But of course, Kylo has never felt a need for cunning. He prefers the path of open struggle, of raw power; he sees even the smallest pretense as almost underhanded.

She finds him overlooking the sea, the night wind blowing his hair in all directions, his eyes fixed firmly on the dark, churning water far below. He doesn’t turn when she approaches, and her heart twists a little. “Kylo.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Her hands tighten into fists, but she forces herself to take a breath, to speak calmly. “Kylo, you must know I had nothing to do with this.”

He looks over his shoulder, his back still to her. “I know.”

She takes a step closer. “So why are you pushing me away?” Because that’s what this is. If she’d had any doubts, any hopes, they all ended with his greeting.

At that, he turns toward her, but the brief flare of victory is extinguished by the look on his face. “We don’t belong together, Rey. We had fun for a while, but now it’s time to face the truth.”

She draws a shaking breath. The air smells of salt and flowers. “I’m not going to leave you, Kylo, remember? I promised.” She can taste the salt water on her tongue, now.

He lets out a sound that might almost have been a laugh, if it weren’t for the despair beneath it. “Rey. Open your eyes. You’re love, and beauty, and everything that’s good in this foul world. And I’m – I’m bad, Rey. I’m the opposite of all that. I’m the sword that cuts lovers to pieces, the bomb that wipes everything beautiful away.”

She can feel her heart breaking. Funny, she’d always thought that was just an expression. “Kylo – “

“Don’t,” he says, savage. “I don’t want your pity. I’m not sad about who I am.” He bares his teeth in a terrifying smile. “I revel in it.”

“It’s not going to work,” she says, her voice remarkably even, considering the storm of emotions inside her. “You’re not going to convince me that we’re no good together, Kylo, because I’ve been there. I’ve seen how good we can be. You have too, I know you have.”

For a single heartbeat, she sees something cross his face, a precious second of confusion, of longing. Of vulnerability.

But then it’s gone, and he’s turning away from her. “I don’t need you to agree, Lady Kytherea. I just need you to stay away from me.”

His words are like being hit by the full blast of his power. By the time she begins to recover from the pain, he’s gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Aphrodite . . . laughter-loving queen . . . 'Tis thine the world with harmony to join, for all things spring from thee.” (Orphic hymn to Aphrodite)

The god of war has been neglecting his work.

There was a time when she wouldn’t have noticed. Now, it’s all she sees. Kylo has clearly stopped his involvement on earth, and – despite everything she once thought – it’s not a good thing. The gunfire doesn’t stop, the blood still flows, there’s just no direction to it. It’s all more pointless than ever before.

She tries to put it from her mind. Kylo is no longer her concern, he made that abundantly clear. The memory of what he said to her that night still hurts like very little else ever has.

But the thought lingers, pushes at her when she least expects it, refuses to be ignored. Not unlike Kylo himself, she thinks with a twinge of resentment.

So finally, Rey looks at the world, and lets herself see it as it is, all of it. The pain and the love, the fear and the joy, the brutality and the hope.

Rey looks down at the world, and knows what she needs to do.

 

She takes her time choosing her dress. She finally chooses white. The color of virgins, and brides, and she’s neither, but somehow it seems fitting. So do the bracelets of silver, and the slender dagger at her waist. She brushes her hair until it shines, and dabs lotus blossoms to her skin.

When everything is perfect, she goes to look for her husband.

 

She finds Hux working on one of his machines. As always.

His workshop is a thing of wonder. Everything here speaks of creation, of the special kind of power that lies not in the body, but in the mind. Half-finished machines litter the many workbenches. Strange devices with blades and wings dangle from the ceiling, their metal parts reflecting the late afternoon light.

Hux himself is bent over a strange device, hands busy shaping what looks like a metallic arm. For a second, she feels almost wistful, watching him. There’s something magic in the way his fingers race, twisting, shaping, taking metal and stone and creating something marvelous.

If he’d been willing even to just let her watch him work, maybe things could have been different between them. But he never could suffer her presence in this, his favorite place. Even now, he’s frowning as he catches sight of her. Fortune has smiled on him today, she thinks; she’s only here to ask a single question.

“Do you love me?” Her voice comes out clear, and strong.

He looks at her as though disappointed by her stupidity. “You know that I don’t,” he says, his tone oddly gentle.

“And you never will.” It’s not a question.

He shakes his head.

She knew all this, but seeing him confirm it sends a dull anger through her nevertheless. She wonders if he understands just what he’s admitted.

This isn’t about her. All of his supposed jealousy, his rage, the revenge he exacted against her and her lover - it was never about her. It was about Hux, and Kylo, and the kind of hate that can only grow between two who are, in some ways, so very similar. It was about two sons of Zeus and Hera, one savage, hostile, but tolerated because of his power; one so eager to please, but hated for his weakness.

There’s a part of her that pities her husband. For what he was, and for what he’s let himself become. She pushes that part aside.

“Then don’t you dare,” she begins, and something in her voice makes his head whip up from his work, makes his eyes stick to her, wary, as she takes a step closer, “punish Kylo for loving me. Not now, not ever.”

His lip curls back in disgust. “Don’t tell me you honestly think he loves you. I know my brother. He’s an animal. Love? He’s not capable of it.”

For a moment, she is frightened, and he almost starts to smile, sure that he’s won. Foolish man. She fears her own power; fears that she’ll hurt him badly for what he’s said.

“Kylo has more love in his pinky finger than you do in your entire body, you wretch,” she says, her voice rising. “He cares, he – “ _He’s kind, when you let him be. Gentle, even_. “Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.” _He doesn’t show weakness, Kylo. Except maybe to me_. 

“He’s a liar,” Hux spits out, his face a mask of fury. “And you’re an idiot.”

“Kylo has never lied to me,” she says, calm in the face of his rage. A thought tickles at the edge of her mind, at that, but she puts it aside.

Hux takes a step toward her. “I will not let my wife be seen with that cur,” he says. His fists are clenched and a vein in his forehead is throbbing. “Do you hear me? Never.”

“And how exactly do you propose to stop me?” Her voice cuts the air like a whip, and Hux freezes, struck. “I am Aphrodite, last child of Uranus. I am not without power, _darling._ ” She lets her power show as she says it, lets her skin pulse and throb, and Hux lets out a low hiss of air.

Kylo was right, she thinks, feeling strangely detached. She could blow him to smithereens, if she wanted.

She gives him several seconds to find his courage, and is relieved when he doesn’t. Let their marriage end as it started, with a cold peace.

“Goodbye, Hux,” she says on her way out the door. “You can have the house.”

 

Is this what it is, to feel like a goddess? She feels as though she is bursting with power, the world open before her. She is unstoppable, she is glorious, she is both ancient and new.

Kylo would tell her to channel her power into training, to make herself a more formidable fighter. Well. There are things Kylo still doesn’t understand.

She goes down to earth, instead, and walks across continents, leaving a trail of newly happy couples in her wake. She is somewhere far to the south when she stops, having finally exhausted enough of the flame of victory to take a moment to think.

 _Kylo has never lied to me_ , she told Hux, and it was true. That’s why it hurt so much, that night in Thrace. Because Kylo has never lied, and if Kylo said he doesn’t want her near him, he means it.

The thought bursts into her head as if it’s been waiting, fully formed. Kylo wouldn’t have lied – but then, he didn’t quite say he didn’t want her, did he?  He said he needs her to stay away.

She had been assuming that the only reason a person could ever need their lover to stay away was if desire had faded. And then she talked to Hux about Kylo – well, screamed at Hux about Kylo, anyway – and now… Now she’s not so sure.

_Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there._

Hux doesn’t see Kylo’s tenderness, his capacity for love, because Kylo doesn’t want him to. Kylo will happily take fear over sympathy any day.

But it was her on Thrace. She thought – no, she _knows_ – that what they had was special. Why would he hide his feelings for her from her, after so many months together?

_I’m bad, Rey._

When the answer hits her, it’s so obvious that she wonders how she didn’t see it immediately. He would hide his feelings if he thought she was better off without him. If he’d seen her humiliated and mistreated because of his rivalry. If he thought that by leaving her, he was protecting her.

… that _idiot_.

For a moment, she considers just walking away. There is a world full of mortals around her, and dozens of gods and demigods, too, and she knows now that very few of them would turn her down. Surely she could find a lover who is both attractive and emotionally competent, if she tried.

But it is not in her nature to walk away from love.

And besides, she has a feeling that once she talks Kylo out of being such an idiot, they’re going to make an excellent team.

 

She finds him at his palace, in one of the upper rooms, a surprisingly bright place ringed in open stone archways, each leading to a balcony.

For all that she expected to see him there, she’s still unprepared for the actual sight of him. One look at his familiar face, and she’s breathless, her throat and eyes stinging.

“Rey.” His voice. So smooth, so familiar, yet wary now in a way that has her fighting tears. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s it?” she says, forcing her voice to stay light. “No ‘hello, Rey’? No ‘it’s good to see you’?”

“You blew my door off its hinges.”

She shrugs, still too high on adrenaline to feign regret. “I wanted to show you that I’ve been practicing.” He stares at her without speaking and she feels what may be a tiny twinge of regret. “I can put it back, if you want.”

He shakes his head absent-mindedly. “It’s good to see you,” he says, his voice rough.

She could ask why, if it’s good to see her, he hadn’t made any effort to do so. Instead, “How are you doing, Kylo?” she asks, softly.

He turns, angling his body toward the nearest balcony. She follows, not allowing him to hide. “I am in good health,” he says. She can see from his expression that that’s only half the story.

“And are you happy?” she asks, and it feels as if the whole world is waiting with her for his answer.

It is a strange thing, to see the war god look defeated. His shoulders slump, his eyes drop, and he looks away from her again, although not before she sees the pain in his eyes.

 _I miss you_ , she almost says, but stops herself. It can’t happen like that. There are certain things Kylo has to realize for himself. “I was thinking about you the other day,” she says instead. His eyes meet hers. “About the day we met.”

His lips twitch upwards. “I remember.”

“You hated me at first,” she says fondly.

“Hated you?” The sound he makes then is somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I never hated you, Rey. I hated myself, for wanting you. For losing control because of you.”

“Really?” she asks, unable to hold back the small part of her that is still so thirsty for approval. “From the beginning?”

“You’re so beautiful. I couldn’t – from the moment I saw you, I wanted you.”

There it is, the confession she was looking for. But tied to something that is exactly what she didn’t want to hear. Her throat aches, her eyes sting, but she refuses to cry. “I’m not beautiful, Kylo,” she confesses.

“Rey.” He lets out a harsh laugh. “You’re the goddess of beauty. I don’t think there’s a soul alive who wouldn’t say you’re the most gorgeous woman they’ve ever seen.”

She swallows hard against the lump in her throat. “They don’t see me,” she whispers. “None of them, not even you.” He looks at her, not understanding. “When you look at me,” she says slowly. Clearly. “What do you see? What do I look like?”

“Tall. Pale. Muscular, but soft. Brown hair, hazel eyes.” His hand rises, gently grasping her chin, his thumb tracing a path across her jaw. “Always that look of determination on your face,” he says softly. “Your breasts are small, and perfect. You have these freckles on your cheeks, they make me want to spend all day memorizing each and every one.” His hand drops and he steps back, his face closing off again.

She swallows hard again, but this time it’s not sorrow causing her throat to tighten. “That’s what I see, too,” she says.

She wants to touch him so badly that her body aches with it. If he would just let her hold him, they could work this out. But he is holding himself back, despite the longing so clear on his face, and so she waits to see what more he needs.

“We need to face reality,” he finally manages. “Your power is light and love, and mine is dark and destruction. War and love just don’t belong together.”

And there it is, the crux of their dilemma. The sword that has hung over their strange relationship from the first. Rey has thought and thought about it, without finding an answer.

It turns out that sometimes, the answer doesn’t come that way, through holding the problem down for scrutiny. Sometimes, she needs to relax, and _feel_. And right now, with her heart filled with joy and fear and so much love she can barely stand it, the answer comes to her as naturally as if it was there all along.

“I think,” she begins, trying to sound casual, “I think that it must take more than bravery, for these humans to risk their short lives fighting for their country. It must take a kind of love.”

He looks at her, then, a spark of hope glimmering in his eyes. She wonders if he sees the same hope on her face. She wonders if he can see that her heart is in his hands.

“I think,” he says, slowly, “That sometimes love is like a battleground.”

She never knows which of them starts the kiss. Maybe both of them. Maybe neither. Maybe this was something that, no matter how strange it seems, was always destined to happen. It certainly feels that way, as his tongue meets hers, as her fingers twist in his hair; it feels as inevitable as the tide.

*

The thing about being the god of war is, you get used to dealing with your problems by destroying your enemies completely. That can be a problem when your lover is the goddess of love and beauty, and you’re surrounded by those who want to steal her away.

Well. _Kylo_ doesn’t think it’s a problem. Kylo would be perfectly happy to deal with the gods, demi-gods, and assorted others who dare to so much as look at Rey by sending them straight to the underworld.

But Rey says he can’t. So. No killing.

But he’s not used to this, to allowing the rage to bubble under his skin without unleashing it. To watching Poe give her one too many ‘friendly’ hugs, or seeing Dionysus’ drunken flirting, and allowing both of them to walk away intact.

Rey is the center of the universe, she’s his fucking heart and soul, and his blood howls for the chance to hurt anyone who would dare to take her from him.

And he doesn’t. Because she’s the center of the universe, she’s his heart and soul, and he would rather die a thousand deaths himself than put a frown on her face. Why she would frown at Poe’s long-deserved murder is beyond him, but she would.

His restraint is rewarded when she turns to him after the party, smiling. He would do just about anything for that smile.

“That went well, don’t you think?”

He thinks back, remembering the party. Nobody was dismembered – at least, not outside of Kylo’s imagination. In fact, there were no deaths at all.  Zeus didn’t punish anyone with banishment to the mortal realm. And Rey left with him, and will be sharing his bed tonight.

“Yes,” he says, and means it.

They talk as they make their way back to his palace. Sometimes he thinks this is the strangest part of their relationship. Not the way she comes and goes, not the bold, terrifying children they’ve created, but the way that when they are together, he can just _be_. There’s a universe full of beings terrified of him, and here Rey is walking by his side, intertwining her fingers with his as she chatters happily.

And he listens, and he replies; finds himself eager to share with her, too. So strange, for him. Maybe that’s why the others all give them nervous looks even now. He’s not himself with her.

He’s better.

She smiles at him again as they walk in the door, and this is a different smile, one that has his blood racing and an animal growl already halfway out his throat.

“Kylo – “ she starts, but whatever she was going to say is cut off when he drags her to him, pressing her body to his and his lips to hers.

It’s been many, many years, but each kiss with Rey is like the first. The familiar rush of light hits him, embraces him, matches itself to his dark edges to create a single, flawless whole. Time stretches and contracts; golden and endless, yet too slow when he needs Rey’s dress off _right now_ , needs her moaning beneath him, needs to hear her scream his name.

He will never, ever get enough of this.

“Kylo,” she whimpers, and it’s the most beautiful sound in the fucking universe.

He lifts her, wrapping her legs around his waist, and kisses her lips, her neck, her entire perfect body. Kisses her, and lets everything else fade away, lets his world be filled with light.


End file.
